Affirmation

While one’s affirmation should be the specific positive statement of Truth with regard to the false claim or suggestion, it should also be so universal that you can feel that all are blessed thereby.

To affirm the Truth in a limited way for a specific situation is to permit the false claim to go unchallenged in its supposititiously universal sense.

When good results are not obtained promptly, one should deny specifically, even though such denial is a purely human auxiliary.

The function of specific denial is to lead thought to that state where the human aspect is gone and pure being remains. (S&H 454:31)

However, though it may appear to be a person denying the claim, the divine “I” of one’s being never becomes identified with the denial. A denial is not Truth denying error; it is error denying itself.

Even though one may appear to be using the divine “I” while denying error, it is still not the divine “I” at all. Nevertheless, such denials do not interrupt the continuity of divine realization. At the same moment one is denying error, at that same moment Truth is declaring itself uninterruptedly. Mind will never cease to be aware of itself.

The absolute is always correct, not the relative. One cannot be too absolute. If one is accused of being too absolute, that is nothing but personal sense. Possibly you have lacked wisdom in your exposition.

Think radically; speak wisely. (B. Young)

There is no restriction to the activity of divine Mind, which is man. Jesus’ work was simply the activity of divine power which becomes available and operates divinely whenever man identifies himself with the divine. He is not a person. We should think of God as activity, using verbs to describe Him rather than by employing nouns which are static.

War, as well as a cut on one’s finger, is an endeavor on the part of mortal mind to disrupt one’s understanding of body, “the tablet of one’s being.” (S&H 227:26)

A material body is mortal mind’s concept of the spurious “I”. It is also its concept of itself as matter. The real body is joy, beauty, loveliness. The divine Mind constitutes its own body, thinking, which is misrepresented by personal sense as its own thinking, body.

One does not look subjectively on the universe, but includes the spiritual universe as one’s own body.

There is nothing in my experience, or body, which is involuntary.

Business: It is almost a prevailing belief that our business activities are dependent on the activities of other persons, or on the government of this or other nations, and that our business is out of God’s hands. As we understand the coordination of things, we shall free ourselves from this mass mesmerism.

Do not think of church officers as persons who are guided by divine Principle, but as the full indivisible operation of Principle itself.

In order to aid the movement, you must see it impersonally. The greatest danger to the Christian Science movement is a false theological approach to Christian Science on the part of the members of the movement itself, who are unwilling to refrain from personalizing God and Mrs. Eddy.

The Mother Church is one’s subjective realization of Being.

How is one to work in order to improve the church, to increase church attendance, etc.? We must change more radically the method of knowing the Truth. Reform in Christian Science comes from doing away with a personal sense of existence, which in turn will appear as a better church movement; in the final analysis, the church as an institution is the effect in human experience of the realization of the first definition of church in the Glossary.

Declare daily that all action is divine action.

All action is God. Just act like God, good. (B. Young)

Ascension begins when one stops thinking of oneself as a person. One ascends as one realizes that there is nothing requiring ascension. To the extent that I think that someone else has not ascended nor should ascend, I myself have not ascended.

The burden of proof of ascension is not on the person who supposedly dies, but on ourselves, who supposedly remain.

Think of your association as a right idea which you include; not as a human organization to which you belong. This concept will result in greater benefit to you.

When you analyze mortal belief you are in a way giving it some reality. Message 1901, p. 12:27-2, is an example of handling evil, though the word “handling” is bad since it gives one a sense of duality.

It is of the utmost importance that there be a proper use of language, and that the statement of Christian Science be correct. (S&H 283:24) On the other hand, one must adapt one’s phraseology, keeping one’s thought clear meanwhile.

Adultery is derived from the Latin root “alter” meaning, “the other of two.” In the case of the adulterous woman, Jesus performed the office of Christ by refusing to accept as true the false suggestion about the woman. By showing the false nature of the accuser, he silenced the condemnation and accusation of those who personalized sin. Then he, as “I,” being conscious of his own loving perfection, could not condemn her either. In other words, he first healed the accusing aspect of sin and then healed the victimizing aspect of sin.

In the measure that we live the divine all-inclusiveness, the more change there will be.

“The Holy sense of God is ALL, and Love, and there is no other Mind to send thoughts. Here is the best way to meet malicious animal magnetism.” (Mary Baker Eddy to Mr. Tomlinson)

The proper way to handle malpractice is always impersonally. That makes it possible to see its unreality, there being no channels nor mediums therefor. Malpractice expresses itself by its own idea and according to its own law.

The aim of the devil is to keep you disturbed, not to see or acknowledge or penetrate the cause, the argument which is handling you. A man throws a stone at you. The devil throws a man at you. Leave the man alone and get after the devil. We may not be able to stop malpractice, but we can rise to where it does not touch us. (A. Greenough)

As hypnotism (animal magnetism) is based upon evil, it cannot be a science, and therefore, it cannot control. It must, however, be denied specifically. Such denials are effective only when done from the standpoint of Mind in active operation, expressing itself lawfully and not from the standpoint of a person giving a treatment. The right kind of denial leads to the spiritual heights of pure being where Being itself replaces the denial. If you think you are a Christian Scientist, one among many in a world of millions of men, you are lost, and start out mesmerized. To avoid being hypnotized, you must declare you are never asleep, especially in the morning after rising. But this declaration must be made about the “I” of your being and not about a Christian Scientist.

We must deny the material sense of earth and world. We are not in it and it is not in us. One should not be reluctant to deny error. Reluctance to deny error permits error to handle you.

Only affirmation from the standpoint of Mind results in healing, and this kind of affirmation includes the best denial.

By admitting the possibility that a difficult situation may arise is to make it possible for that situation to arise in your experience.

Rise into that higher consciousness by knowing that you do not have to rise but already are it. Consciousness must be universal.

With reference to I John 3:1-3, the following interpretation applies: “Now are we the understanding of God.”

The real trouble began, not when Adam according to the allegory in Genesis took the apple from Eve and ate it, but when Eve was created, thereby for the first time bringing into the Bible narrative a sense of duality.

We cannot lose our body, for we shall always have, or be, the embodiment of Mind. All that we can lose is the material personal sense of body.

The belief that the body is material is death itself. We can only get out of it by knowing we were never in it.

Friends tried to bring Lazarus back to a sense of life in matter and failed. However, when the belief of life in matter yielded to Truth, it was made evident to the materialists around as raising the dead.

Wishing to restore life to matter resulted, with few notable exceptions, in failure. Instead, realize more constantly that life has nothing to do with death, or matter. Handle the belief of birth and death as applied to a person. One must not think that about himself, or one will open the door to death for himself. Every disease is a symptom of death. Therefore, disease overcome is a reduction of the belief of death.

Truth is its own demonstration by being Truth.

The prerequisite for chemicalization is a sense of duality.

The Christ is the understanding of that which divinely is, as that which I divinely am.

Christian Science is a Science first and not a Christian sect.

Cause is God, Principle; effect is idea, man. However, the discrimination between cause and effect is not in Mind but is a human distinction.

Condemning must be stopped, because by condemning you identify yourself with the claim. By admitting imperfection in others, one limits oneself, for by seeing them, one actually admits imperfections for oneself, through calling it someone else. Criticism and gossip are the evidence of personal sense on the part of the critic or gossiper.

Do not accept the suggestion that one is condemned to suffer for doing wrong. There is no reality to evil. Therefore there is nothing to be punished.

There is no conflict between God, Good, and evil. The only conflict is a conflict between worse and better conditions of mortal belief. As long as you believe that you are in a conflict between good and evil, you are in for a fight. As the belief of fighting decreases, you will progress more easily.

You cannot become conscious of any conflict between a sense of “myself” and a sense of another. That is only possible to personal sense and it is not divine.

By approaching an understanding of God as good persons fighting evil, early Christians experienced martyrdom. Never believe that a lot of error is going on outside of you, for that makes it possible for you to experience all that error which you acknowledge was formerly going on outside of you.

“When being is understood” (S&H 76:6), this “being” means your being, your everyday being. There is no process whereby to become divine manifestation. Man IS the divine manifestation or divine self-knowledge. Be continually aware of the effulgence or state of one’s own being. One’s individual existence is above a mortal sense of being. Nothing is going on outside of me, that is, outside of the “I” of my being. Seek a sense of pure being, without any sense of person. There is no interference from the outside for there is no outside to divine being.

We should rejoice in the completeness of being, in which the realization of divine being does away with the tenseness of human conceptions, and we should live divine Science rather than have a vision about it.

“Be the Mind that never heard of error.” (Mary Baker Eddy to Joseph D. Mann)

Body is consciousness and experience. Therefore only that which constitutes divine consciousness is my body and not what suggestion would suggest. The idea is body; whatever is material about it is the false belief about it. There is no private body, there is but one infinite body, my body, and that body is never touched by anything, but is ever effortlessly maintained by divine Principle.

My thinking or knowing is divine consciousness, body, and nothing else. If a thing isn’t true about the divine Mind, it isn’t true about anything, body included.

The only body there is, is Christian Science. It is never outside of Mind, receiving something from Mind. It is divine consciousness in its all-inclusiveness. Body is the universality of being. Mind being, embracing or embodying within itself all true self-knowledge.

Therefore, in dealing with body, don’t deal with matter. Realize that you do not possess the material body, as Mind realizes that fact, and be convinced that no material body possesses you. Claim no sex.

The purpose of the Christian Science movement is to assist Christian Scientists in becoming more spiritually minded, not to perpetuate the movement.

In church activity one should ask, “Is this activity going to contribute to the demonstration of Divine Science?”

Our value in circulation work lies in what we know rather than what we do.

When we recognize that consciousness is the operation of divine Principle, that is the law to the human situation, and it helps to promote most efficiently the circulation and distribution of literature. Divine ideas do not circulate or go in circles. That is what the committees are doing.

Do not think of a reading room as a room full of people seeking spiritual understanding. There is no human mind to be enlightened. The divine Mind is fully expressed and understands itself.

The Truth will remove the belief that the reading room is not functioning properly. The usefulness of an idea cannot be impaired. All that is going on is the divine Mind expressing itself. When the divine facts are approximated, a reading room is the instrument.

Don’t prepare the soil for human persons. Get away from persons. If one is disturbed about a reading room, it blocks the demonstration. Handle the seeming reluctance of persons to become Christian Scientists. Also handle laziness and fear of losing something pleasing.

Following Mrs. Eddy only as far as she follows Christ, should be our attitude to the Christian Science Board of Directors. The trouble with our movement is that it is being carried on too much as a Christian sect and not as the Science of Christianity.

When there are factions in a church, it is not what it appears to be. Rather, it is an attempt of evil to disrupt your true sense of church. Don’t keep factional strife going by admitting the false suggestion as your thought or as the thoughts of others.

Quoted As From Mrs. Eddy

“Death is an illusion. It is the termination of the universal lie which says that man was born. No person will ever be more conscious of death than he is of birth. Everything that has a beginning must of necessity have an ending. Death is the ending of the beginning called birth. Death is not in the victim we say has died, but in us. It is we who put our friends in the ground and cover them up and ever afterwards declare them gone. All the phenomena are in us and not in them.

“Our verdict of death in our friends does not change them one iota. Jesus was the same after apparent death and burial as before. Again I say, no one will ever be conscious of death. It is absolutely nothing and it is impossible to be conscious of nothing. Man is a coexistent creature with his creator. Man has always existed, and if none of us have ever been conscious of death up to the present moment, it is pretty good evidence that we shall never be conscious of it. The person who says, “I am dying,” is but a helpless automaton who unwittingly becomes a victim to preconceived opinions, and voices the culmination of error. If the senses lie about life, they also lie about death. We lose consciousness of our friends by a change of belief; a stronger belief in the verdict of the world than in the presence of our friends, wipes out their presence and leaves in their place the lost belief.

“We shall exist to them unless they likewise have accepted some other belief similarly destroying their conception of us. The disciples were the same to Jesus after his apparent death as before. We exist (as matter) in each other’s minds, and all we know of our friends is our mortal conception of them. This concept remains until we transpose it with another, when the last becomes the dominant belief. There is nothing gained by waiting for death for it never comes. We must individually lift ourselves above the claims of the senses.” Mary Baker Eddy

“I think it has been my great aspiration that the wave of error, calling itself death, should not pass over me. I see this morning that this aspiration, this thought of itself is error, in that it builds up the belief that there is something to fight, and something to overcome, thus it fosters fear. “What if this wave does seem to engulf me, the opposite fact that it does not, is the Truth and by this seeming I am not changed, not harmed, for nothing can ever have any power to affect us. This view removes fear, and removes the aspiration, and shows us by this means I am doing more towards conquering, more to keep off the wave. We need not take up arms against a shadow when it is clear to us it is a shadow.” Mary Baker Eddy

There is no such thing as a live person. To be a person is to be dead. By acquiescing that you are a person, you accept your death sentence. To see a person is to admit death for oneself by identifying oneself with human personalities. Be concerned with the divine facts and not the human evidence. Utterly reject all suggestions of the inevitability of death, for eternal life is never attained through death. The only death is the death of the human material personal concept. (Dr. deLange)

Every disease is a symptom of death. Therefore disease overcome is a reduction of the belief called death. Handle the belief of birth and death as applied to person. One must not think that about oneself or one will open the door to death. (Dr. deLange)

The following declaration is needed in order to get results: “All there is to me is the divine Mind infinitely manifesting itself.”

The argument that one is a human being must be silenced.

We should start the day by the recognition of the fact that the “I” of my being never slept nor was unconscious. Neither is it limited in space nor does it exist as a person, but it exists always as the oneness and allness of divine Being.

It is never Life itself that hesitates to declare that it is Life. Thinking of oneself as Life is expressing Life, Life uttering itself. (Dr. deLange)

The divine “I” never emerges from yesterday nor goes into tomorrow. If you ascribe power to evil, this “you” is the “you” of ignorance, not the “I” of true being. (Dr. deLange)

Generic man is the right concept about that which to the human concept is the human man, for the term “generic man” refers to the universal concept of being, man’s universal character. (Dr. deLange)

Good whether appearing as your good or my good, is still good, God. Good is always a direct manifestation of God, but it is not expressed through human person. (Dr. deLange)

All is the divine Mind, therefore the false claim cannot hide itself and so becomes revealed.

Happiness is the oneness of God experienced as the oneness of one’s own body. The unfoldment of divine reality experienced as one’s own Ego is happiness, happiness not happy.

Everything which implies happiness in its divine, not personal, sense describes the Allness of Deity, its nature, substance and quality. Mind is supreme happiness. In its highest sense happiness is divine self-completeness as Oneness. This is not a personal condition. There is no dependence on outside circumstances, for in its selfexpression Mind finds its own Being and functions.

This does not mean, however, that one is to get rid of material possessions, but rather that one is reminded that if material possessions appear necessary to one, he is indulging in a limited sense of things which is not productive of true happiness.

We must free ourselves of the suggestion that happiness is a goal to be reached. Such a suggestion implies the reality of imperfection, while happiness can only be visioned from the standpoint of perfection.

It is a good thing to mentally remind yourself daily that God is the only lawmaker for man, morally, spiritually and physically.

There is no future in the eternal now of infinite Mind, hence there is no future in which to realize Truth, or to know God, or to reach perfection, and there is no demonstration to make because the only demonstration that is, was, or ever will be, is God, and is made, and man is the knowledge of this fact. (E. A. Kimball)

Truth is its own demonstration by being Truth.

The greater works referred to by Jesus may quite well be the prevention of problems from arising. Certainly the best demonstration is to prevent a situation from arising. To devote excessive effort to the solution of one’s own problem, to the exclusion of the universal problems, is to limit one’s own demonstration.

The most effectual denial is “There is no mortal mind.” The proper way to handle it is always impersonally. On the other hand if you think about yourself habitually as a person you are in no position to handle it .

If one denies error, and this denial is only for one’s self, or one’s patients, the denial is incomplete, for inferentially you are admitting the reality of error for others. Neither is the denial of error from the standpoint of a person doing the denying, a complete denial. (Dr. deLange) By continual right appreciation of one’s perfection, discordant conditions diminish. This is the exercise of dominion.

Man includes the earth as a spiritual idea. He is not in the earth as a material sphere, nor is he included in earth. God’s supremacy expressed in and as man is dominant power. (Dr. deLange)

“I beg that you will allow no envy or root of bitterness to spring up between you but ‘that you love one another, even as I have loved you’ and may the grace of God and the fellowship of love be and abide with you forever.”